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German Translation

German is ranked 11th as the most spoken language worldwide with 90 million speakers. It’s actually the most common mother tongue and takes the top spot from English, Spanish, French, and Italia. 16 percent of people in Europe speak German as their first language. It’s spoken in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Belgium, and Luxembourg as well as other countries. German is in the Western Germanic Language family with English and Dutch.

It was standardized because writers wanted to be understood by a diverse array of readers starting in the 19th century. The Brothers Grimm actually authored the largest dictionary, the Deutsches Wörterbuch in 1838.

Three Genders

Gender is often a difficult thing for language learners to master. The German language introduces a neutral gender as well as feminine and masculine. The neutral gender exists for words that the traditional genders don’t apply to.

The Long Words

German is well known for its long words. Its longest word is “Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertr agungsgesetz“, and it means” the law concerning the delegation of duties for the supervision of cattle marking and the labeling of beef.” It’s so long that the word is now obsolete. It was judged as being much too long and impractical for bureaucrats to even use.

Fraktur Script

German was written in a calligraphic script called Fraktur script. Fraktur is a Gothic script and is related to the Latin alphabet, it’s just a different type. It entered into use during the 1500s and was used all the way up until World War II.